Profile | Hage Geingob, Namibia’s veteran statesman Premium

Hage Geingob, Namibia's longest-serving Prime Minister and third President, passed away at 82 after a battle with cancer.

Hage Geingob, Namibia’s longest-serving Prime Minister and third President, was an anti-apartheid activist turned statesman, who cut a reassuring figure.

He passed away early on February 4 in a hospital in the capital Windhoek, where he was receiving treatment for cancer. He was 82.

Born in a village in northern Namibia in 1941, Hage Gottfried Geingob was the southern African country’s first president outside of the Ovambo ethnic group, which makes up more than half the country’s population.

He took up activism against South Africa’s apartheid regime, which at the time ruled over Namibia, from his early schooling years before being driven into exile.

He spent almost three decades in Botswana and the United States, leaving the former for the latter in 1964.

The tall, deep-voiced leader studied at Fordham University in New York, and much later in life received a PhD in the United Kingdom.

While in the U.S., he remained a vocal advocate for Namibia’s independence, representing the local liberation movement, SWAPO, now the ruling party, at the United Nations and across the Americas.